Neo Monsters: Dragon Trainer – Not Just Another Pokemon Game on iOS (with Tips and Tricks)

So yeah, I’m a fan of Pokemon games (if you’re reading this then I believe you’re also one of us). And, if we’re talking about that monster catching games in iOS, I believe no one does a better job than guys from Pocket Trend.

If you’re looking on their games portfolio, almost half of their list is dominated with monsters catching games. Micromon, Hunter Island, Dragon Island, and their latest game, is also an improvement of monster catching game, and it’s called Neo Monsters.

Neo Monsters – The Premise

Neo Monsters comes with you that has been chosen as the inheritor of your late uncle’s monster ranch. Coincidentally this uncle of yours is also a Championship monster breeder, and more coincidentally is somehow having a not so good reputation in your country. With a story that is believed to be made up by the king, your uncle is framed as a traitor to the Empire.

This fact makes you, as his nephew, become the target of many other monsters breeder. So in order to avoid yourself becoming an easy target, you should start building your team. Like always, you will have four starter monsters offered to you. Of course, you can just choose one out of four available monsters.

Afterwards, you will be capturing more wild monsters as you go. Train them, fight with them, and explore the online stories to resolve the mystery of your uncle.

If that’s not enough, you can also apply to fight in the league. There are tournaments that can be challenged with and who knows, maybe you can repeat the legend of your uncle, becoming the Champions of monster breeding.

Neo Monsters – The Gameplay

Compared to Pocket Trend’s previous games, Neo Monsters gameplay feels really similar to Hunter Island. However, this similarity is not like they’re actually the same game at all. Neo Monsters is like the upgraded, more polished version from the Hunter Island. It has more realistic feeling in their combat interface, especially the new animated battle between the monsters. All and all, it’s not even right to compare Neo Monsters to its predecessor. It is a better game overall.

Putting aside graphics, the core gameplay of Neo Monsters is still the fight between monsters. Like any Pokemon games out there, Neo Monsters also uses turn-based fight. The turn when your monsters attack is decided by time. Like its predecessor, every moves use time. The more powerful the move is, the more “second” it consume, and the longer the monster will have to wait for its turn. This time-based gameplay is what made Neo Monsters unique and separates itself from Pokemon.

Having a fixed and unique gameplay however, doesn’t mean that there’s no improvement in terms of the core gameplay in this game. Pocket Trend doesn’t stop to innovate by introducing a new 4v4 team tag battle system from previously 3v3 team tag. With this new 4v4 battle system, now you can bring more monsters to the battle. You can bring up to 16 monsters in your party so if you’re planning it well, there’s no way your party will be wiped out by the enemies.

Not only their battle system, Neo Monsters also comes with a massive 900+ monsters list complete with their own animation and some new skills. With this new skills also comes new strategy to counter stronger enemies. Now, if you’re standing in the same level with the enemies, even if your monster quality isn’t as good as theirs, as long as you’re in the same level, you can actually beat them.

There is new training system being introduced in Neo Monsters. Now, instead of your monsters gain experience by fighting, your monsters will be improved by attending training sessions. In this training session, using a card-based system, you will be choosing training card for your monsters. There are five cards available that have its own grade and its own stats, bronze for the worse card, silver, and gold for the best card. Then, for each grade, there’re Attack, Defend, HP, and Spped stats card. With this new training system, you can actually choose yourself how you want your monsters to develop.

And if you have internet connection to play with, Neo Monsters also periodically gives new content update to players. This new content is like a side story, a story about the uncle, Hector. Also, it’s a good way to catch more monsters on the way along, and some good way to get training sessions faster.

Neo Monsters – Things I Like

If we’re talking about things I like from a monster catching game, of course, the game itself is what I love. However, in Neo Monsters, it isn’t just about the catching things that stands out from the game.

The first thing is the online story. Well, the story itself is pretty nice, but honestly, I don’t think anyone will buy the idea of two people just talking with some static text. It’s about the length of time playing that can be achieved. With this online story, you can actually get more training sessions, more monsters to catch. The bottomline is, there are more things that you can do with this feature.

The next thing is the new skills. With these new skills, any effect that’s being dealt to the enemies, now can be exploited. So, for instance, if you’re enemy is getting poisoned, there’s a new skills called “Poison Eater” that can deal a huge damage to those guys. The way you design your team, will greatly affect how the outcome will go.

Neo Monsters is built with its battle system around. There’s still free roaming mode where you can freely walk around. However, mostly, it’s just battle and battle and battle.

Tips and Tricks

I haven’t finished this game yet, and perhaps once I’ve finished this game, I will update again this post to give more tips. Nevertheless, here are some tips that I’ve found so far.

Design Your Team Correctly

With the new skills added in Neo Monsters, you can build a stronger team if you know your monsters ability. Once you’ve known your monsters ability, try to create a combination between monsters that will give greater result when put together.

There are two things that you need to remember to build the right team.* Look the skills that can give enemies bad effect* Look for their PASSIVE skills* Look for the ???

The first one is the easiest. When you design a team, look for the skills that can give enemies side effect. There are several effect that I’ve encountered until now; STUN, ASLEEP, and POISONED. Prioritize monsters that can dealing this effect globally (i.e: Dream All, Stun Entrance, etc). You just need one monster in your first 4 and another one with ability to eat it. For example, Mandrapod has “SLEEP ALL” ability, so you will need to find another monster with “Dream Eater” to deal huge damage. These are some skills that I know will deal huge damage if the enemies got some side effects:* STUN with Timestrike* POISONED with Poison Eater* ASLEEP with Dream Eater

The second one is monsters with passive effect. Always try to build team with monsters that have passive abilities, because they will always give some advantage even if they weren’t able dealing huge damage. So even if your monster isn’t that tough, as long as they have passive abilites, bring it with you. Note that “Holding Ground” passive ability is an exception, they won’t do good unless your monster is strong.

Lastly, if your monsters skills have this ‘???’ thing, it means that your monsters aren’t matured yet. Wait until they evolve and you will have new skills.

Training Session Tips

When you’re doing training session, note that it would consume monster’s training sessions limit. Because every monsters have limit in its training session, make sure that every session always be as efficient as possible.

One of the trickiest thing is aiming for combos in training session. The rule in doing combo is that you have to train in the same area again. These combo however, doesn’t give that much compared to gold card. So if you’re faced with options to do combo but skipping gold card, choose the later.

Also, all the cards will be shuffled again, so there’s no use for saving any cards. At your last session, just try to aim for combo or gold card since all your cards will be gone.

Out of Training Session?

If your monsters is out of training session, you can always give them de-aging fruit. These fruits can also be obtained through the online mission using the silver/golden key. However, should you remind yourself that once you’ve opened the mission with this key, the mission will be available for 1 hour. During this hour, you can enter the room unlimited, as long as you have enough energy. So make sure to enable your notifications in order to keep the key usage as efficient as possible.

Tips on Getting Super Epic Monster

I haven’t got any Legendary monster yet, so I can’t give you tips on how to get one. However, I can share some tips on how to get Super Epic. When you’re rolling, notice the golden one. If you’ve seen it 13 times, press STOP. When you do it, there’s a bigger chance that you’ll get that monster.

Conclusion

Neo Monsters has successfully maintained PocketTrend’s reputation as the best monster-catcher game in iOS. It has polished and better quality product overall. If you’ve played monster-catcher game or looking for another one, Neo Monsters is no brainer and should definitely goes into your pocket.